How Did Neocons Bamboozle REAL ID? People WANT to be
Tracked, Tagged & Scanned!

'We want biometrics' say bank
customers

by Will Sturgeon

33% of
banking customers are ready to embrace human scanning technologies in the hope
of adding greater security to their buying and selling. Card cloning, PIN theft
by shoulder surfing and high-profile phishing attacks are all undermining
consumer confidence in secure banking, they say, and so they're ready for the
Mark of the... er, I mean, biometric banking
technologies.

They know
what they want but can't quite put their finger on
it...

One in three banking customers
is ready to embrace biometric technologies in the hope of adding greater
security to their finances.

Card cloning,
PIN theft by shoulder surfing and high-profile phishing attacks are all
undermining consumer confidence in secure banking and many would be happy to use
biometric solutions such as digital fingerprints to add an extra layer of
authentication and security, according to Fujitsu Services.

Fujitsu interviewed UK banking customers and found
one in three would like their banks to start using
biometrics.

Fujitsu claims
to have already enjoyed success in Japan with trials of biometric cashpoints
where customers' palms are read. The system works using a proprietary Fujitsu
algorithm which creates a pattern of the blood vessels in the palm using an
infra-red scan. It is then checked against patterns which can either be stored
in the system or on a bank card.

Ann Hosford,
business development manager for financial services at Fujitsu, said: "UK banks
need to draw on the experience of other financial institutions around the world
if card fraud in the UK is to be reduced."

"Biometric
security can be used to build customer confidence and to reduce PIN theft,"
added Hosford.

One of the
greatest concerns about biometrics is their reliability, though such concerns
owe much to headlines written in the earliest days of public
trials.

One of
the areas the technology fell down on was with false negatives - instances when
individuals were declined services on the grounds the machines didn't recognised
them. This was particularly common with Asian women who had very fine skin but results could also be
jeopardised by the use of hand cream or cuts, scratches and
blemishes.

The other major
headache is on the logistics side: getting customers to come in and register
their details and also providing the new hardware and
infrastructure.

Hosford told
silicon.com: "Potentially of course this could be a hurdle as people are
required to actually do something and banks will incur the
costs."

However,
Hosford believes the money saved from fraud and the ability to regrow customer
confidence will provide their own rewards for the banks. Hosford also predicted
such implementations won't happen overnight and gradual rollout will ease the
headache of signing up customers.